Forgotten heroes who rose above the scandal of drugs

At the Olympic 100 metres final in Seoul in 1988 Canada’s Ben Johnson beat
Carl Lewis, of the United States, in a world record time of 9.79 sec. It was
at the time, as the writer Richard Moore notes, “the race to end all races,”
one in which hype was surpassed by the event itself.

Ben Johnson: steroids and growth hormones were part of his training
Photo: GETTY IMAGES

“It was magical, thrilling, the stunning denouement to one of sport’s most compelling rivalries. A race that – we instinctively knew – would be remembered long after the rest of Seoul had faded in the memory.” In that instant, of course, no one knew why the race would be remembered.

The fact that it turned out to be – in the title of Moore’s riveting book on the subject – The Dirtiest Race in History is the reason for its place in the Olympic story.

Famously, the winner Johnson was stripped of his medal three days later after testing positive for the banned substance stanozolol. Perhaps less known is that of the eight men on the track, five others either tested positive or found themselves implicated in drugs cases.

Lewis, the eventual gold medal winner and an Olympic legend, had tested positive for stimulants at the US trials before the Games, but the case was dismissed on appeal when he said it was the result of “inadvertent use” – unknowingly taking the substance in a herbal diet pill. The amounts detected were very small but the positive test emerged only 15 years after the event, which says something about the attitude of the US authorities at the time.

Linford Christie, who swapped bronze for silver after Johnson’s disgrace, tested positive in the course of the Games for pseudoephedrine but was cleared because of “inadvertent use”; 11 years later he tested positive for the steroid nandrolone. Dennis Mitchell, who was fifth, served a two-year ban for using testosterone in 1998 and later testified that he had been injected with human growth hormone.

Desai Williams, who shared the coach Charlie Francis with Johnson, admitted he had used anabolic steroids. Ray Stewart, who pulled up injured, was banned for life in 2010 for offences while coaching.

Only the Brazilian Robson da Silva, and Calvin Smith, of the US, who took bronze, have unblemished reputations. Smith told Moore: “I feel I should have been the gold medallist.”

The book, longlisted for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award, is a gripping tale, painting a brilliant picture of the personalities involved, and the background to drugs testing and drug taking at the time. Fascinatingly, it floats the possibility that while Johnson was undoubtedly guilty of drug abuse – steroids and growth hormones had been part of his training programme for years – the actual test that convicted him could have been a set up as the runner has always claimed.

Moore is best known as the author of four books about cycling. I bet he’s itching to write about the United States Anti-Doping Agency report which accuses cyclist Lance Armstrong of being the ringleader of the biggest doping conspiracy in the sport’s history. Because there are clear parallels and intriguing questions raised.

The first concerns the way that sporting authorities want to keep suspicions of drug-taking under wraps. Their instinct is to protect the reputation of the sport – and that doesn’t always mean rooting out the wrongdoers.

In this context journalism – and the natural scepticism of journalists – has a role to play. Moore reports on the strange mood at the post-race press conference, before Johnson had been stripped of his medal. “[Johnson’s] 9.79-second run – and the margin of his victory – produced outright cynicism. Journalists often have to write less than they know, or think they know.”

In the case of Armstrong, some reporters were brave enough to write about what they thought they knew in the face of outright denials, bullying and libel suits. The fact that they carried on asking the questions is a sharp reminder of the purpose of journalism at a time when it is often under attack.

But the other question raised by the book – and by the Armstrong scandal – is the one that even the best journalists can’t answer. Why would anyone want to win by cheating? Moore suggests that Johnson’s coach was driven by a sense that the playing field was not level.

Yet Johnson agreed to be part of it even though he still maintains his victories were because he was born to run, not because of pharmaceutical assistance. But neither he nor we will ever know that – just as we will never know whether Armstrong, with his pathological desire to win, could have been a world-beating athlete anyway.

The real tragedy though is that it is the names of the cheats that make the headlines, yet the real heroes – the ones who resist the peer pressure, and stand clean and proud – are often forgotten. So let’s always remember cyclists such as Christophe Bassons whose refusal to take drugs ended his racing career, and Smith, the bronze medal winner who should have won gold.